It could very well have been 14 years since I've heard that word...but I doubt it. That would leave me being only 5 years old...I don't even remember what I was doing when I was 5 years old, much less having a distant memory of a strange word. No, likely I knew what that word meant sometime between the 3 and 14 years of a raccoon's life.

And aren't raccoons vicious little scavengers who would not be suitable as a pet?

my family has had a million ferrets and my parents presently have a trucker ferret named lucky. he might be the very ferret you remember me talking about because they've had him for a long time. i also had a pet raccoon